Dossier author was told FBI had a source inside Trump Organization

A new testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveals some shocking information. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) has more.
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Christopher Steele, the former British spy shown in London in a 2017 file photo, wrote the controversial 'Steele dossier' about alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia.(Photo: Victoria Jones, PA Wire/PA Images)

WASHINGTON – The former British spy who compiled a controversial dossier alleging coordination between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Kremlin was told that the FBI had "a source" inside the Trump Organization whose information lent some credibility to his findings, a witness told congressional investigators last summer.

Glenn Simpson, founder of the Fusion GPS research firm that hired former British agent Christopher Steele, told investigators that the FBI had shared the existence of "a human source from inside the Trump Organization" in a September 2016 meeting with Steele.

The information came as Steele shared his own findings with a top bureau official in Rome, according to a transcript of the Simpson interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee released Tuesday.

The panel's top Democrat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, made public on Tuesday the transcript of a 10-hour interview between congressional investigators and Simpson.

"The American people deserve the opportunity," Feinstein said, to learn more about the explosive document that Trump and Republican lawmakers have disparaged as fiction.

“The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice," Feinstein said. "The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public."

The previously undisclosed information about the FBI's possible inside source was revealed during a lengthy exchange between investigators and Simpson, who said that Steele first proposed that he share the contents of the dossier with the FBI in the summer of 2016 after becoming concerned that "a presidential candidate (Trump) was being blackmailed."

Steele drew upon a range of sources, including figures linked to Russian intelligence, to compile the dossier last year. It was based on raw intelligence gathered by Steele on a wide-range of issues involving Trump, from allegations of shady financial deals with Russians to salacious allegations related to a Trump visit to Moscow.

Simpson said Steele first shared his concerns with the FBI during the first week of July 2016 and in a subsequent meeting with the Rome official two months later when Steele provided the official "a full briefing" of his findings. (At the time, the dossier was being funded by a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's campaign, after initial work on the project funded by a Republican donor stopped.)

Following the Rome meeting, Steele told Simpson that the FBI already had amassed similar "details" based on their own intelligence.

"Essentially, what he (Steele) told me was they had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source and...my understanding was that they believed Chris' information might be credible," Simpson told investigators.

According to Simpson, Steele did not know that the FBI had already been investigating the matter when he first met with the bureau.

When he first publicly acknowledged the existence of the investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to the Kremlin last March, then-FBI Director James Comey said the inquiry had begun in July 2016.

A special counsel and three congressional committees — including the Senate Judiciary Committee — are investigating Russia's campaign of cyber attacks and disinformation to influence the election in favor of Trump.

The transcript’s release comes less than a week after two influential Republican members of the Judiciary Committee recommended that the Justice Department launch a criminal investigation into Steele.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a senior member of the panel, suggested Steele may have violated the law by allegedly lying to federal authorities about his contact with reporters regarding information in the dossier. The dossier was published in BuzzFeed in January 2017.

Grassley blasted Feinstein’s action to make Simpson's transcript public, indicating a further political break in the panel's continuing investigation of Russian interference.

“It’s totally confounding that Sen. Feinstein would unilaterally release a transcript of a witness interview in the middle of an ongoing investigation,” Grassley said in a statement.

Simpson said he hired Steele as a subcontractor in May or June 2016 to look into Trump's business dealings in Russia and to find out what Trump did on various trips to Russia. Simpson, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal who wrote stories about Russian corruption, said he hired Steele because of his expertise on Russia.

"He was the lead Russianist at MI6 (the British intelligence agency) prior to leaving the government and an extremely well-regarded investigator, researcher, and, as I say, we're friends and share interest in Russian kleptocracy and organized crime issues," Simpson told the Judiciary Committee. "I would say that's broadly why I asked him to see what he could find out about Donald Trump's business activities in Russia."

Simpson said he was surprised by the information that Steele provided to him in the initial memos that later became part of the infamous dossier.

"What came back was something, you know, very different and obviously more alarming, which had to do with — you know, which outlined a political conspiracy and a much broader set of issues than the ones that we basically went looking for," Simpson testified. "You know, initially we didn't know what to do with this."

Simpson said he assessed the credibility of the information that Steele provided him by looking at the reliability of Steele as a source and at whether the information made any sense.

"So from that perspective, you know, this was alarming because Chris is a credible person, he's well respected in his field, and, as I say, everyone I know who's ever dealt with him thinks he's quite good," Simpson told the committee. "That would include people from the U.S. government."

He said the information also made sense in the context of Russia's past efforts to interfere in other countries' elections.

Simpson said Steele told him that he was "professionally obligated" to inform the FBI about his concerns that the Russians might blackmail Trump.

"So I just said if that's your obligation, then you should fulfill your obligation," Simpson testified.